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Johnny Cash family home opens as museum

HOME OF A LEGEND: Rain clouds gather over the childhood home, dating to the mid 1930s, of singer Johnny Cash in Dyess, Ark. Money and memorabilia from Johnny Cash’s family and friends have helped historians restore a significant part of the Historic Dyess Colony, a government collective built to pull Depression-era families out of poverty. Photo: Associated Press/Danny Johnston

Johnny Cash’s childhood home in Dyess, Arkansas has opened as a museum to the country music legend.

The “Ring of Fire” singer and his family moved to Dyess when Johnny was three. The five-room home has been refurbished and features the family’s piano as well as other period items and memorabilia.

Cash’s sister Joanne, who oversaw the refurbishment project with her brother Tommy, tells the New York Times, “We’ve got everything just as it was… It’s been very emotional for me.

“We used to gather around that piano at night and sing gospel for an hour. That was our entertainment.”

Cash spent his youth and teenage years in Dyess, which is about 50 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, before enlisting in the United States Air Force in 1950. He died in 2003.

Bosses hope to attract 20,000 visitors a year to the singer’s old home.